


Cast Beyond the Moon

by DamnthatGeko



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Apocalypse, Character Death, Child Abuse, Child Death, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Sad, barbarian au, broken cybertron au, broken earth au, sparkling death, the broken earth series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2020-02-15 21:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18677800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DamnthatGeko/pseuds/DamnthatGeko
Summary: "Respectfully Alpha Trion,” Optimus said, optics hard, servos balled up into fists at his side. “The moon has caused me enough grief. It cannot be restored, the most powerful mech on all of Cybertron tried and failed. He has paid more than his price for our hubris.”Cybertron is fallow and unstill, energon is fought over and jealously guarded by high walled settlements and vicious raiders. Optimus can no longer hide in the Yuss settlement, he has sparklings to rescue and a future to face.Broken Earth AU





	1. Optimus

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven’t read The Broken Earth trilogy then I highly recommend it, it's fantastic.
> 
> I’m playing fast and loose with time increments here. A vorn is however many earth years it would roughly take for 1/100th of a spark’s life time to pass. Basically the equivalent of years to humans.  
> Center = Orogene  
> Set = Settlement  
> Unsettling = Earthquake
> 
> Center: centers are mechs that can basically metal/earth bend. All the energy that's needed to move the ground is taken out of the air around them. That's why they create an icy cold whirlwind around them called a torus.

No one can conceive of a time before the unsettings, when the ground moves and shakes like it’s trying to wake up and life grows thin and desperate. 

Only I remember when we were prosperous. But we were arrogant, we reached for the stars and made weapons out of the children of Cybertron themselves. It has been uncountable years since Cybertron lay unstill. Those who move Cybertron through intention and will, who are hunted wherever they go unless they wear collars like cyber-dogs because of the chaos they can bring, the centers hold an answer.

You are our last hope, so let's begin at the end. 

 

Optimus didn't feel the shifting until it was upon the Yuss settlement. In the distance he sensed the energy, kinetic force pouring around it, parting like a river of sand around a pede. Protected from the seismic wave by three little bright sparks.

It was a death sentence for the sparklings, he realized with cold dread. The people of the set would trace the perfect circle of unshaken metal and crystal back to Optimus' tiny house. They would tear Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, and Bluestreak apart for saving the little houses and streets from being shaken to pieces. But Cybertron had never been anything but callous as far as Optimus was concerned. It would not cry for three center sparklings.

This realization hit him like a physical blow. Maybe that was why, when the shifting reached Optimus’ hunting party, he didn't even try to stop himself. He reached into the earth, connecting to the nodes he found there and pressed his will downward. He kept the ground steady as, all around them, the ground shifted, metal buckled, spikes of rust colored silicate were thrust upward into the light. The shifting lasted longer than Optimus could have ever imagined it could last.

When the metal had settled to only minute tremors that Optimus could quell with nary a thought, he had the presence of mind to remember the party with him. Many of them had dropped to the ground in an effort to avoid losing their footing.

“Pits.” Said one of the party into the sudden quiet. Another one of them took it upon themselves to voice everyone's thoughts. “Someone here is a center…"

Optimus said nothing. They would find out it was him soon anyway, there was a perfect circle of undamaged metal around him, himself as the center. The target.

One of the gatherers went for an antique pistol at her side. It was as old as the function empire and obviously worked off her own energon, a limited resource even in a quiet time. Definitely not something to be fired during the beginning of an unsettling. They all exclaimed as she pointed the gun at one mech and then the other.

Here on cybertron, centers were not welcome. They would never be welcome. Their power was too much, too unpredictable for everyone else to live beside. And Optimus was one. He and the three sparklings back in the set, all hiding in plain sight.

They eventually took the time to trace back the circle to him, as he knew they would. When they did the mech with the gun pointed it him steadily.

“Please don't,” he pleaded with her.

She didn't listen, finger tightening on the trigger and hatred in her eyes. He reached down into the metal below and tugged on a sheet of partially calcified silicate. It came up in a sharp and jagged spear, ending her life before she could pull the trigger. He only had to kill one more after that before the rest fled away from him and away from the settlement into the Mithril Sea

He turned towards the set, seeing its unshaken walls in a thoroughly shaken landscape. He had sparklings to rescue.

 

Time stretched away to the horizon. The trek through the broken landscape was tricky and Optimus collected a servofull of dents and nicks on the journey. The walls of the set soon rose above him. The settlement of Yuss was built on the struts of a much older, much larger city. It was small, relatively isolated and had been his home for the past seven vorns. 

The gates weren't shut. They should be, now that it was an unsettling. But the regular mechs inside would not know that this was an unsettling yet. That the tremors in the ground wouldn't stop for vorns that the energon wells inside the set would soon dry up cut off from their small reservoirs as cybertron shifted and shook. 

It took him a few more klicks to make it close enough to the gates to see the damage of fire and battle. Cold fear dripped down Optimus' vertebral strut at the sight. He picked up his pace.

"Optimus!"

Ratchet crouched beside a haphazard stretcher, white and red paint stark against pink stained sand. As Optimus jogged over, Ratchet signaled to two heavy frames who lifted the stretcher and began hauling the mech upon it inside.

“We thought you were scrap.”

“No old friend, not today,” said Optimus wearily. 

Ratchet did not ask what had happened to the rest of his hunting party. Out of every living spark in the Yuss set, there was only one mech who knew what Optimus and the three sparklings were. Ratchet did not have to ask what happened because he knew, and he knew the reaction that common mech had to those who could connect with the nodes beneath the surface of cybertron and command then to their will. The old doctor had traveled from set to set in his time, and had known a few academy trained centers. Thus he recognized Optimus for what he was. Instead of exposing him Ratchet asked Optimus how he could be of assistance helping keep the sparklings’ abilities quiet, which was how Bee became his apprentice this last vorn.

The thought of the sparklings made Optimus cold all over again. There was no hiding now. The city had been untouched by the shifting, which meant that the settlers knew at least one of their number was a center. It was only time now until they traced back the effect to its origin.

Optimus grasped Ratchet’s shoulders before he could move away. “The sparklings,” he said with quiet dread.

“Look Optimus-” Ratchet grimaced and places a hand on his elbow. “-you might want to sit down for this.” 

 

Ratchet didn’t accompany Optimus up to the house. The doctor had injured to look after. 

Optimus didn’t remember most of the walk back to his home. Was it really a home anymore? Members of the set stared at him from the street, out of windows, from out of doorways. He couldn’t stay here much longer, suspicion followed him like a dark threatening tail. He felt numb. Were they staring at him because he had become stone? That would explain the unreality. The adrenaline that was so far away.

He sat down in the set’s sand beside the little body. It was just outside his house, beside the little goal that the three of them had recruited him to make with them one long afternoon so they could play ball. No one had bothered to move it.

Ratchet had told him what happened. Optimus had eventually needed to sit down.

They had had visitors that day before the unsettling. Big mechs with thick plating, red optics and many beautifully carved and cut knives, arrows, and hunting spears to trade in exchange for energon and minerals. Both of them even had a zap-horses. The people of the set suspected they were from the south and east, across the Zeolite Plateaus and Mithril Sea. No one realized the shaking had begun until those on the walls of the set noticed the tossing and turning of the ground like a restless sleeper.

Ratchet said that he had been close enough to see the whole thing. He had been dropping Bee off after his apprenticeship, Bluestreak and Cliffjumper outside as well to meet them when suddenly the three had grown very still and quiet. And little Cliffjumper, stupid, hard headed little Cliffjumper, two whole vorns younger than either of the other two, put his little hand to the ground to concentrate.

Optimus had trained them better. But, this was an unsettling beyond anything he had ever felt. The sparklings would have known that they had no choice. Let the shake happen and die, stop the shake and die.

After Cliffjumper made that one, stupid mistake that Optimus remembered training out of him every time he brought the sparkling out with him to gather or hunt, the outcome was fixed. The people of the settlement, the people of Yuss turned to Cliff as one angry body, descended on him as one angry body.

Killed Optimus’ sparkling as one angry, bloodthirsty body.

Optimus reached out for Cliff’s still frame and touched the helm gently. There was energon beneath his peds, soaked into the sand, more than he thought possible from such a small body.

The crowd had begun to turn on the other sparklings, buffeting them and reaching with grasping servos and blindly furious optics. Out of the crowd the big south-eastern mechs pulled Bumblebee and Bluestreak out from under Ratchet’s arms. One handed them to the other, now astride the zap-horses, and they left. Not without a fight. As they thundered out of Yuss they took down mechs casually, brutally, as though they had done their duty and now just having fun before their time was up. They had left through the gates, both sparklings with them.

            Optimus brough Cliff’s body into the house. There he cleaned him in the single cracked washbasin and stripped a clean blanket off of his own berth to create a small death shroud. Underneath the floor was his pack, still well maintained, still well stocked. He paused after removing it. There were three small packs in the compartment, not quite finished, still in progress. Only now did solvent sting his optics.

He cried for a long time. So long that he began to mechanically prepare the last things he needed, wet still dripping down his face and onto the dusty floor of his house. Not theirs anymore. Just his, and soon to not even be that. To soon stand empty.

He fashioned a sling from another blanket, tying Cliff to his front and his pack to his back. When he left his house there was a crowd. They didn’t make any move to hurt him, but as he walked they parted like particulates with the same charge as a magnet.

Halfway to the gates Ratchet fell in step with him, craning back over his shoulder to see the mechs following them at a safe distance. Killers.

“You shouldn’t be here Ratchet.”

“And you shouldn’t be run out Yuss Optimus,” Ratchet snapped. “Listen…… I’m sorry.”

Optimus looked at him from the corner of his eye. He didn’t feel anything right now, he couldn’t tell if he pitied the medic or if he was bitter and betrayed. But there was nothing to say, no words that would change this.

“I’m so sorry,” this time Ratchet’s voice broke with static and his eyes were shadowed with a thousand patients lost and one tiny sparkling no older than five vorns pummeled to death by the very patients he managed to save. “I made you this.”

Optimus accepted the medkit and stored it away in a side pocket of his pack. He adjusted the straps of his sling.

“You will be under suspicion for helping me.”

“Frag that! I’m helping a friend. Please… let me know if you find them,” Ratchet had stopped a stone’s throw away from the gates which still hung open.   
            “I will.”

Optimus was about to cross under the passage of the gates when an arrow from the guard tower above struck the sand beside his ped. He looked up to see five such archers, a few with pistols, the one who had fired, a green and black mech, was knocking another arrow, a look of determination and fear in his eyes.

Optimus’ rage boiled out of him in a great shake. He ripped his way into the nodes beneath him and sent a wave seismic force up into the gate and walls. Metal and stone shook and crumbled. The air grew cold in a tight spiral around him as he sucked heat from the air to channel into a tremor that threw most every mech to the ground. Except for him. He stood solid as the gate crumbled down in big crushing blocks.

How dare they. How fragging dare they. Murderers. Every single one of them. Even those who had not killed Cliff themselves, they had raised mechs to hate centers, they had passed on their hate from mech to mech like a virus during the cold months.

Optimus would have torn the set apart. Would have torn a huge spear of aluminum and aggregate composite and brought it up through the skin of the city, drawing on the deepest nodes he could reach. But Ratchet's cry as he fall with the rest made him hesitate, and that allowed him to regain some control.

So he Left the city to die, slowly in the largest and the longest unsettling ever. Soon the winds would blow in, and the raiders, and they would not rebuild their walls and gate in time. They would fall. He hoped Ratchet would see the good sense in leaving and finding another set before then though, sets were always looking for medics.

 

Out in the sand, Optimus tore open a deep hole in cybertron, tiny as a needle hole in terms of proportion to the planet, but it felt like a titanic effort. There he buried his son. Cliff had been his son, if not in spark, then in all the ways that actually mattered.

It wasn’t long after that he began his journey for the third time.

 


	2. Cor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, changed the name of the settlement Optimus was hiding in from Iacon to Yuss because I figured out what I wanted Iacon to be. Another quick point of house keeping is that Cor is not an OC, who he is exactly is something for later.

Your diametric opposite arrived before the unsettling at the greatest Set of cybertron. It shone and sparkled in facets like a jewel. And it played home to The Academy. The Academy was his target. You would be shocked by his look of vicious glee.

He dismounted from his zap-horse, landing on his pedes in the soft iron earth. He was still far from the city. But distance did not matter. He used each center as a node, as though they were deep in the crust themselves. He ripped, he pulled and rent your life apart again.

 

Cor heard muffled voices from outside his prison. He pried his stiff servos from around his pedes and leaned forward to better make out his carrier’s voice through the heavy chamber door.

“-almost iced two other sparklings while at creche, we took him here immediately.”

"An how long has he been here?” A voice replied, this one unfamiliar.

“The last two solar cycles.”

There was a thud on the other side of the door and Cor stood up with a screech of stressed joints. He scurried around the circular chamber to the other side, putting the dais between himself and the door. He didn't want the academy mech to take him away. There was no reason he couldn't stay with his family, he reasoned, he had been careful up until two days ago. He could be careful now. His carrier would let him out on his own time. When Cor learned how to hide it better, to resist reaching into the ground when hit or teased.

Cor huddled down with his back to the dais and his optics squeezed tight shut. He couldn't hear the two anymore but he didn't need to hear them to know they were still there. He could feel their weight shifting on the metal of the ground outside.

Cor had always been able to sense where things were without his optics. If he concentrated, he could feel every vibration in the ground, the hum of polyatomic structures.

Here, in this chamber, everything was especially sharp and vibrant to his unseen sight. He opened his optics and stared up above him to the center of the chamber. Between a stalagmite and a stalactite of steel was a glowing point of bright silvery light. Through the klicks and cycles he had sat in silence, sometimes he thought he heard and saw a pulse from it. It had become comforting. He wondered if any past mechs like him had been held here, waiting for the academy to take them away. Or if they had been mobbed. He closed his optics again and shivered.

The door slid open with a hiss of hot afternoon air. One set of footsteps slowly advanced through the chamber. It wasn't his carrier. They halted once they were in front of Cor.

"...two solar cycles you said? Didn't think he was worth feeding too?"

His carrier spluttered. No one had left energon for Cor, in fact, no one had opened the door since he had been put in here. But that was fine, Cor could handle that, he just had to get better at hiding what he was and then carrier would have let him out.

Cor opened his optics. The academy mech was shorter than he thought he would be, less imposing. He was a dirty blue-green color and built with sturdy squares and straight lines. A strange cylinder dangled from between his dentae and Cor could smell a sooty smell around him that made his intakes itch. He looked old, ancient in fact.

"I don't want to go," Cor said simply. "I want to stay here, with carrier, and Sol, and sire. Please."

The academy mech looked down at him with pity in his dull blue optics. "What you want doesn't matter here mechling."

He crouched down on his haunches, taking the cylinder out of his intake. Cor pulled his knees up closer to his chest, the mech was uncomfortably close.

"Your carrier wants you gone Cor, so does your sire. You're lucky to be alive as it is. Those two other mechlings you almost killed, they had a sire and a carrier too yeah?"

Cor nodded.

"Well, they were gonna come for you the first night you were in here, they wanted you dead. And for good reason. You know what centers can do right?"

Cor nodded again but the academy mech explained anyway.

"They can start sinkholes when they prick their digit, dry up energon wells when they bang a strut, and freeze a whole set when they bite their glossa. They aren't going to give you a choice kid. If your sire and carrier kept you they'd have to move, everyone here knows what you are, what you could do. They'd have to move to a new set, and when you slipped up again? Froze some more mechlings, maybe killed a few this time cause they were telling you your sire's a lousy mech? There's no guarantee they'll leave you, or your family alive afterwards. You don't get a second chance Cor," he explained calmly.

Cor couldn't stop the tears. He peeked around the dais to see his carrier standing as far back as he could, posture closed off and hostile, eyes averted and guilty.

"I'll be good," he said, partially to the mech and partially to his carrier. Everything was going to be different, everything had already changed and Cor could feel panic rising in his spark. "Please I won't slip up, ever. Please."

"You are good. That's why we're gonna go make you a good life at the academy. Besides-" he stood back up and put the cylinder back between his dentae "-you don't have anywhere to go kid, and we want you."

Cor stood up shakily. He felt numb, everything had come crashing down on him all of a sudden. Now with the academy mech here everything was real, he couldn't undo his mistake no matter how hard his mind worried at the problem. But. His Carrier.

He slipped away around the dais towards his carrier, small feet tapping against the floor of the chamber until he reached the softer ground outside.

His carrier flinched as Cor scuttled towards him, as though he was afraid that a sparkling, barely up to his waist could hurt him. That brought Cor to a halt. His intake worked for a few long seconds, unable to find words.

"Carrier?"

His carrier flinched again and drew in even more on himself. There was nothing in his eyes but fear and anger and desperation. This mech was no longer Cor's carrier, he thought, and the thought became anger.

The academy mech came out of the chamber behind him, he put a heavy hand on Cor's shoulder. "I can take it from here."

The mech that once was Cor's carrier turned without hesitation and hurried back down to the set. The mech behind him patted his shoulder again.

"You'll be alright kid. Come on, let's get you some energon before we hit the road."

 

The mech, named Kup, as Cor found out during their travels to the academy, was a rough and talkative mech. He had endless stories to tell as the plotted across fields of soft silicone cyberplants and stretches of craggy, rust orange plateaus ever closer to their destination. Down winding roads and broad highways they went, the capital, Iacon, a mere thought on the horizon.

One night, when there was a chill in the air and it was hard to fall into recharge even though Cor felt exhausted and hungry even after consuming his ration of energon, Kup turned his old face up to the starry sky and began an ancient story.

"Now I don't know who started this one. I certainly wasn’t alive to see it. In fact, who was there is alive now I bet you. Not even your sire's sire’s sire, that's how old this is. You see we used to have two moons Cor."

Cor nodded. He knew this, he had learned this in creche.

"And when we had two moons, ohh we were so rich in energon. One of the moons mechling, one of them had wings like a predicon, and when it flapped its wings, energon fell from the sky. We had crystals growing everywhere, and the softer silicones too. Never needed for anything."

Kup paused to inhale whatever was in his cygar. So Cor finished; "and then we Cybertronians made them go away. That's why Cybertron is mad at us. That's why we have the unsettlings."

"Not quite little mech, that's what they tell you at creche but I've traveled the world and heard this story from Tarn to Polyhex" -he leaned forward conspiratorially- "and they all contradict each other. But what I've gathered is that we grew too greedy, we wanted the energon out beyond the stars. So they made the first moon into a zap-horse and rode away across the stars on her. She never came back to us. Found greener pastures, ha!"

He laid down his cygar in its carrying case and closed it away. Now he seemed almost mournful, his movements slow and measured.

“Poor Duo Luna, they got the worst of it. We were hungry, so hungry that we broke them. And now we don’t have either of our moons…”

After a few minutes of quiet Cor finished the story for him. “So Cybertron was angry, and took away the gift of transformation.”

“And cursed us with smart aft center mechlings like you.”

Cor just smiled.

Later that night, when Cor was laying out on the hard ground, he tried to imagine what a moon would look like in the sky. What color it would be. Blue? Yellow? White? He imagined them all, and thought to himself that it would be awfully strange to have something in the sky other than stars. He imagined it like a great luminous optic staring down at him with unwavering attention.

Cor shivered at the thought and his optics caught on one of the spires of white stone that jutted out of the sunken planes. He traced the perfect curve of it from where it began in the middle of a range of steep hills curling up into the atmosphere where it darkened to a mere outline against the black sky, studded with distant winking stars.

 


	3. Bumblebee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come with me as I skip along the meadow of different Transformers series and pick different design, character, and places from the field like flowers to add to my fanfic basket.  
> Also changed the name of the fic because I wasn't super jazzed about Polyatomic Cor.

You don't know for certain what happened to your sparklings, but you can speculate now, after everything is over. I know exactly what happened of course. My domain, my curse, is history, and history has always been a good story we tell ourselves. I have read their struggles in my book and my spark hurts for you even now. But they are strong, you trained them well.

  


Bumblebee stopped clawing at the big mech's arm when Yuss disappeared behind the horizon. He was tired and the panic of the unsettling and the whirl of the angry crowd was beginning to fade leaving him weary.

The crowd. Cliffjumper.

Bee squeezed his optics tight shut and clung to the mane of the zap-horse in front of him blindly. There was a yawning gap in his seven vorn long life now. He had only started to see the shape of the missing thing, only just started to feel it drag at his spark. But no. He and Bluestreak were in danger, were being carried off to places unknown. Now he had to focus, to find a way back to his carrier.

He opened his optics and looked over to Blue on the other zap-horse. They were cantering over long flat oval shaped discs of pocked iron, the beasts kicking up a cloud of orange rust, that turn red in the evening light. Right then they passed into the shadow of one of the spires, a huge curving spike of white ore scraping the upper atmosphere. Bluestreak's optics, big and round with fear, stared at him from where he rode in front of another mech. This one a deep navy blue. He was keeping Bluestreak in place far more gently than his companion. Bee winced as he tried to shift in the mech's vice like grip.

He needed to know who these people were, he reasoned, so maybe he could leave a message for his carrier to follow, to know where to go. Vaguely, he wondered if these were The Academy. Bee really had no idea what The Academy was other then it was where centers, like carrier, went. Somehow he didn't think they were.

"Where are we going?" He piped up cautiously.

The green mech behind him tightened the grip he had on Bee's shoulder, making him cry out in pain, and said roughly: "Don't speak out of turn sparkling."

The other mech looked annoyed at the other. "Skyquake, do not be unnecessary, they're young and fragile."

The other scoffed. "My words will not hurt him. His own set did all the harm that could be done I think. Well, except killing them,” he added as an afterthought.

The mech behind Bluestreak just gave him a warning look and Bee recognized it as one he had shared in the past with his fellow siblings many times. He in turn made optic contact with Blue who still looked terrified. He tried to promise to him that everything would turn out alright just with his optics. But he saw the same Cliff shaped hole in Blue as he did in himself and instead turned his optics away to the edge spire’s shadow. They needed a plan.

 

It took him until after they had ridden out from behind the shadow of the spire before it hit him. The seed for the idea was planted when Blue, in a very small and solemn voice, announced he was about to purge.

The blue mech immediately stopped his zap-horse with a spray of rust and let Bluestreak down where he did exactly what he said he'd do. Bee struggled to join him on the ground but Skyquake was less relenting then the other mech.

"Let him go."

"Dreadwing, they're centers, I'm not going to let them touch the ground for primus' sake. Pick yours up, he's done purging."

Dreadwing rolled his optics and dismounted to let his zap-horse rest and eventually, after more snipping between the two mechs, Skyquake let Bee down to rush over to Blue.

Bee waited for Blue to wipe his intake before hugging him close. The other sparkling tucked his head into Bee’s shoulder and pressed his hands to his back. The sound of a familiar engine, a familiar something in this stormy sea of events brought tears to his optics. He sniffed them away as hard has he could. Showing weakness in front of these mechs felt like laying belly up and asking for a spear to your spark.

When Bee drew back Blue's face hadn't changed its expression and Bee was reminded of some of the mechs that came to Ratchet sometimes, many of them with grievous wounds. Shock. That was the word the medic had used. Like they weren’t quite there.

"Blue we have to escape you got that? We're going to escape understand?" Bee said quietly. "We're going to get away and go find carrier, then we'll go live in… in Iacon! Or Polyhex!"

It took a long time for Blue to hear him, but when he did his expression changed to one of confusion. "How do we escape?" He asked in a tremulous tone. "They're so much bigger than we are. Bigger than carrier maybe. And they have zap-horses. I also saw a sword on the side of my horse, they've got weapons. Maybe even guns. Maybe-"

"That doesn't matter," Bee interrupted. "We're centers. Trained centers." It felt strange to say it aloud around anyone but carrier. It had been such a guarded secret, buried so deep in his consciousness that Bee knew if he had been asked straight out if he was a center, he would have responded quickly in the negative and would have believed it himself. Great deal of good that did for Cliffjumper though.

That was when Bee began to feel it. A slow poisonous doubt. His carrier had insisted on all the training. All the early mornings, all the late nights so that they could practice controlling their torus’. What if they were standing next to someone and didn't want to ice them? All the times Bee had been left starving while he tried, he tried so hard to pull his torus in, to move the nodes in the world below him, to suppress his instinct to strike back even when in pain. All the times he failed and had his torus inverted and slapped back at him by his carrier's far stronger one. And it didn't do any good in the end. Nothing his carrier taught them stopped Cliff from getting killed. There was nothing their carrier had done to stop their little trio from becoming a permanent duo.

Bee felt angry all of a sudden.

"We're centers," he said again more vehemently. "And we're going to do what carrier said we shouldn't."

"Be quiet you two! Don't whisper together like that or I'll toss you back on the zap-horses." Skyquake said as he began unsaddling his zap-horse. To Dreadwing he shot: "Do you know when he will be showing up?"

"No. But you know how he is."

"I need you to help me ice them Blue." Bee whispered.

"Still, it would fragging be nice to know when he's going to be here. We're not supposed to travel alone with other centers without one of his type."

Blue nodded, optics now glittering with determination. "I'll go around the other side so I don't catch you in my torus."

"Good idea, now-"

"Will you two shut up!" Skyquake whirled on Bee and Blue, sharp dentae exposed to the waning light and claws extended.

Blue made a break for it, running toward the other side of the little camp the two mechs had begun to set up. Bee took a deep invent and plunged his consciousness down deep into the nodes beneath him. Down here was usually still until he willed it otherwise. But the Aftershock of the huge unsettling had left rivulets of constant heat, motion, and force traveling from node to node like synapses. He gathered the energy under him and felt the air begin to whip around him as the temperature slowly began to drop.

That was when Blue screamed.

Bee yanked his optics open to see Blue dangling from his door-wings by one of Skyquake's hands, claws scratching and denting. As he watched, Blue flung his torus wide and ice started to creep up Skyquake's arm, surly bursting energon cables, surly freezing joints.

Skyquake just chuckled, and with a lazy flick of his wrist, as though performing some trick of misdirection and dexterity, he flipped Blues torus inside out and dispersed it with his own.

Oh. They must be centers too, Bee thought, intake agape.

A large, very sharp and very dark sword tip hit the iron beside him. It was a deadly weapon with deadly purpose. He jumped and looked up into Dreadwings disappointed face.

"Could you two have waited for the guardian to show up?"

Bee screamed and threw all the pent up heat and force at him, buffeting him with his torus, sending freezing air all around Dreadwing.

Dreadwing stomped one foot and a wall of jagged iron came up between them to protect him, he then latched onto all the nodes that Bee was attached to and slowly, agonizing, pried up Bee's control of them. It was like hanging off the edge of a cliff and having your digits pried off their hold one by one until Bee had control of nothing but chilly air and his own screaming hot ventilations.

Bee flung his consciousness around wildly. There wasn't anything he could hold onto underneath the surface of Cybertronian, and without that heat and force there would be no torus, no ice to freeze these horrible mechs with. But. Oh but there was the spire.

Bee latched onto it like he was drowning and - oh! It was so different. The sky was down around his shoulders and he stretched heavenward. He wasn't aware of his frame at all. Just rushing upwards in the huge spire that held so much energy, heat, stored motion. There was no where for the energy to go, it was like feeling only a fragment of a great engine, feeling the flow of current but not its source or its destination. Like finding an energon line in a mechs arm for Ratchet, no source, no destination. Except this line was going to burst with energon and he was going to be the rupture line. It pushed him along faster and now he was scared. This was too much, too much and it all had nowhere to go.

It all ended so suddenly that Bee could only see blinding white for several klicks before the world came slowly and painful back into focus. He was lying on the iron ground and Blue was hunched over him, face wet with tears.

There were three mechs behind Blue, one of which he didn't recognize. Their conversation filtered in as his vision swam in and out of focus.

"-we wouldn't have needed to put the scraplets in their place if you had showed up on time Soundwave.

"Soundwave: trusted your capableness. Skyquake: believes you both are not capable?"

Skyquake growled.

"No. We understand that there are other pressing matters for you to deal with, especially at the beginning of The Plan."

The new mech, Soundwave, inclined his head to Dreadwing. "Affirmative. Leader: returning to Kaon shortly after us. Dreadwing, Skyquake, and Soundwave: best hurry back before the gates close after him."

"...Bee?" Bluestreak said tentatively.

Bee rolled over and gave his head a little shake, finally clearing it of the spire’s white buzz. He sat himself up with a groan.

Blue wrapped his arms around him and held him tight. There was fierce determination and love in his hug. It said that even if this escape attempt had been foiled, Blue was game to try again, and again, and again, until they succeeded.

Bumblebee looked over Blues shoulder to see the new mech staring at him. Or as close to staring as he could get. His face was a narrow blank visor crowned with black spikes and finials. His body was tapered, slender and angular, all in black and purple. Bee was reminded of Dreadwings sword, deadly.

Instinctively Bee reached into the earth to get a sense of this mech, to see what the metal could him about his posture, his intentions, his strength. But he could reach nothing. All the nodes were simply inactive, not in the control of another center. No, simply…. unresponsive. The deeper he looked, the more inactive ones he found, like someone had laid a blanket over everything. He was as blind as the average mech now. Powerless. He looked back at the new mech.

Soundwave inclined his head.

Bumblebee felt a cold trickle of fear down his support strut. Whatever this was, Soundwave was the epicenter.

 


	4. Orion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the ship, the ship is here. Also, god I know there's some grammar and spelling mistakes in here. Sorry about that, self-editing for now.

If you had never met him, what would your life look like? Do you think on this? Of course, I know the answer. All paths are laid out before me in flowing lines of ink on a page. You wouldn't have kept your head down, done as your guardian and elders told you. No, there was always going to be a tipping point. A moment when your eyes would open fully. Whether it was him or someone else, your will would not have been subdued for long.

 

Orion took a long moment to admire the four gold proxima on his right servo. They sparkled in the weak sun filtering in through the dusty windows. They had replaced the chipped blue of his servos proximal phalanges, each one a little more tarnished with time. But his newest one shone bright and promising.

Persei caught him looking at the proxima and smiled indulgently. "You deserved the fourth one Orion, it was about time."

"Thank you, I hope that I will have a chance to earn another in the future." Orion put his servos behind his back so he couldn't see the attractive flash of gold anymore.

He was sitting in Persei's receiving room, seated on a rough mesh cushion on the floor and sipping some rather weak snacking energon. There were signs all around the room that she had just played host to a group of other centers, probably of her proxima or higher. She was one of the teachers after all. He wondered idly if his visit with her had anything to do with whatever had been discussed at their meeting. He dismissed it out of hand. What would proxima six and sevens care about a green proxima four?

Persei leaned one of her elbows on the table between them and took a nickel biscuit from an almost empty tray. "You're such a good pupil, and center, for that matter. I'm sure that the guardians and all the councils will be falling over themselves to give you chances."

"Yes I hope so!"

Her interest had helped propel him upward through the ranks of the academy at a steady pace so far. Persei had a penchant for good little mechs who kept their heads down and learned well. But not too well he had noted.

Persei was one of the main teachers for proxima two and beyond. She was particularly adept at the finer control of her torus. She was built in broad arcs and with a decided slant towards an inverted triangle. She towered over Orion, a feat not too hard to accomplish.

"Speaking of opportunities-" _ah yes_ , thought Orion to himself, _the reason I'm here_ "-I think, it's time for your first extended mission."

Orion stilled in surprise. Then he quickly smiled like she expected. "Really? That's exciting to hear!"

She nodded enthusiastically. "There's a set down south near a mercury river. They had a bad couple of floods and a series of boulders were shifted up river. Ever since the river has shrunk and the fishing has dwindled and boats are getting stuck, you know the drill. Iacon wants someone sent out to take care of it, especially with us overdue for an unsettling." She waved her hand dismissively as though a major planetary quake was nothing to worry about.

He nodded along with her words. "And which guardian will be accompanying me? Curatrix again?" Orion's fixed smile became uncomfortable.

"Oh Primus no, no guardian, that's what makes this one so special. You see there's a center who needs to get out of the academy. Between you and me, he's a bit of an eccentric, he's been holding himself up in the library for the past couple years whenever he's free from missions." She spoke with a specific kind of disdain in her voice that wrote data pads on the kind of wild, rule breaking, untamable mech this was. He put down his energon, now fully enwrapped in her words.

"I visit the library quite a lot, might I have seen him?"

"I doubt it. He's practically lived out of the high library for the past nine vorn. Whenever he's here at least. Ever since he got his tenth proxima.

Orion colored. "I didn't mean to imply that a… a _ten proxima_ would use the lower library. A…. A ten proxima?" He said, stumbling over himself. "I didn't know anyone had reached ten in the past six decavorns."

Persei made a "hm" sound as she raised her cup to sip. "Let's just say that there's a reason no one's heard of Cygnus."

"But that aside," She continued, "he's going to accompany you to the set. You're going to deal with some boulders, and he's not going to get up to any trouble making."

 _Oh_ , he thought, _I’m the actual chaperone_. Whoever this Cygnus was, he was the one who was to be watched. And Orion was the sparkling sitter. Sensing an end to their conversation Orion finished his weak energon, and ate the last of his biscuit.

"You'll be leaving tomorrow on zap horses, talk to Hound, you know what to do. And Orion," she said as he rose to leave. "One last thing. There are so few young centers these days and you're both filled with such natural potential. Would be such a pity to just lose that good coding. You know what to do."

Orion colored again and left as fast as was polite. 

 

Orion had spent much of his time at the academy wandering through every available hallway and room. Thus it took only a few questions to the right centers to locate Cygnus' rooms. Orion would much prefer to meet him first in the library, would have just liked to be allowed into the upper library for that matter. But as he was still two proxima away from having that privilege, he had to resign himself to making a personal visit.

He didn't trust the picture Persei had painted. He didn't trust Persei. Whatever the reason she was sending two centers out, unaccompanied by a guardian, it wasn't for his benefit. He just hoped he could stay out of the way of any trouble her decision might cause.

He had reached Cygnus' door. It didn't have his glyphs on the plate over the lintel. He must not stay here often. As he pressed the door alert he wondered if the mech would allow him to take a peak at any of the texts of the upper library.

There was no warning as the door wooshed open and behind it was one of the largest mechs Orion had ever met in the academy. Large, and familiar.

"What do you want?"

Against Orion's will, his jaw dropped. "You're Megatronus," he said stupidly.

"Great," the mech growled. "Another one." Before Orion could do anything, Megatronus closed the door in his face. He stood there for a few klicks before his processor began to work again.

 _Oh_ , he thought distantly, _that explained some things_. Orion had learned about Megatronus long after his fame had come and gone in the academy. He had seemed like a local legend then, a mysterious figure, larger than life. After all, surviving outside the academy as a center for almost seventeen vorns was impressive, nevermind as a celebrated gladiator in Kaon.

Orion had arrived a year after Megatronus had been brought, some said forcefully, to the academy, and by then he had disappeared into the schools depths. _I guess this explains where he went. Well, politeness never went astray, let’s try this again._

He ignored the door chime this time, choosing to knock sharply. He collected his nerves and stood ramrod straight. It didn't take long before the door opened again. 

"I'm sorry Proxima Cygnus," he said before the door fully opened. "I didn't mean to presume."

Megatronus stood in the doorway for a long moment, studying Orion, taking in his dominative stature. The big grey mech had the palest blue optics he'd ever seen in his life. It was unnerving, like being stared at by the icecaps of twin planets. Then he sighed in a way that slumped his massive frame.

"Who sent you?"

"Proxima Persei, she assigned us a mission together." Orion was careful to attach the most courteous of glyphs to his words.

“Oh right, the Persei errand,” he sighed. Megatronus stepped back to allow just enough room for Orion to pass into his quarters. “You’d better come in I suppose.”

He did so, but not without passing very close to the other mech. He felt tiny comparatively, although not frightened. No, he wasn’t frightened, only very very curious.

The room was a wreck. There were data pads piled high on every surface, teetering on chairs, hidden below discarded cubes of energon and highgrade, tucked up against even more archaic forms of data storage. Orion had to stop himself from picking the closest one up and turning it on just out of sheer curiosity. But every one of these datapads had the stamp of the upper library on their casing, and he knew what killed the cybercat, those were for proxima six and up.

“What do you want mech, I’m busy as you can see and I don’t have time to dawdle if we’re going to leave tomorrow.”

Orion turned around quickly but Megatronus did not look angry, rather he had an expression of glowering moroseness and resignation. He tromped passed him to the other side of the room, as though to use the central table to protect himself against _Orion._

“Oh - I, my name is Orion Pax. I came by to meet you, Cygnus” -he made sure to say the name Persei had given him- “and to ask if you needed any specific arrangements for travel. I assumed I would be handling that. I usually do when traveling with guardians… like Curatrix.”

At the name Megatronus looked up at Orion from where he had been studying something on the table hidden among all the debris, focusing on him with a piercing look.

“Ah, well Curatrix will actually know all the arrangements I need for travel, so you can ask him for the complete list,” he said dismissively, looking back down and lifting out a datapad, its screen bright and showing lines upon lines of text.

Orion could not read this mech and it was frustrating. Megatronous was a murky pool of energon, impossible to tell what was down in its depths until you stepped on it. This mech, especially given his history, was the most interesting thing that he had encountered since shortly before his first proxima. He’d much rather continue the conversation then leave to speak to Curatrix. No thank you.

“I’d rather you tell me, or send me a list over comms before tenth sunlight,” he added lamely.

Megatronous grunted affirmative, picking up another datapad to study.

Then Orion remembered the other reason he was here and he could not help feeling far out of his depth. He opened and shut his intake a few times before starting the sentence, glad that Megatronous was distracted by the pad in his servos.

“I was also told, directed, um… informed. I guess directed really is the right word if you want to be totally correct, by Persei… who represented the councils technically… That That.. That we had an obligation together. An obligation to the center future...more of us that is...” he trailed off, aware of how opaque we was being and hoping that Megatronos would understand. He suddenly found the welding on the edge of the table very interesting.

“Hah! The councils must hate you!" Orion's optics snapped back up. The gray mechs shoulders shook with laughter, his fearsome face made soft with merth. "They've tried this before," he wheezed. "But I don't think anyone has taken a whole cycle to ask me to 'face them cause the council said so before."

Orion coloured and he felt the hot flush of embarrassment. He clenched his hands by his sides and schooled his voice to stay as calm and polite as possible.

"I don't see what's so funny. It's not my choice."

Megatronus' laughter stilled and he looked across the table at Orion, meeting his optics with his own pale ones.

"No, it's not. But I've never stood for them ordering me to make them good little centers and I don't intend to change that with you Proxima Pax."

"I don't… understand." And indeed he didn't. Orion felt like this mech in front of him had thrown him off the shore that was the academy, into a sea of… freedom? He wasn't sure, but all he knew was that Megatronus was still and certain as a rock and he wanted to know why he could get away with defying the councils, defying the academy.

“Tell me Proxima Orion, are you a bred center, or a feral center?” His dentae flashed at the last word, as though there was a bad taste in his intake. 

He was not physically menacing, but Orion felt uneasy around Megatronus now, as though the mech was a live wire. He was so intimidating, the grey and maroon mech’s head almost brushing the ceiling and the width of him looked as wide as Orion was tall. He could understand how this mech survived years in the Kaon gladiatorial arenas. This was all without taking into account the gold flashing proxima on every digit, gleaming with warning about their owner’s power and control.

"I'm… I'm a feral, Proxima Cygnus,” Orion responded, trying not to flinch over the word "feral." It wasn't a polite word, and it felt wrong on his glossa.

"Tell me Pax, what does a model center citizen look like to the councils and the guardians? Quiet, controlled, obedient, applying our power where they want it when they want it. A drone, with no knowledge of what could be outside the academy's walls." Megatronus stepped around the table between them, standing tall against the heavy walls of the academy around him.

Orion wasn't sure what to do. He was sure that what was being said was heresy, that Megatronus would be in deep for his words but. But they rang a bell in his mind and he could not leave until the clock struck its last note.

"That is what they're breeding from the feral mechs. That is who they're raising here. From birth, mechs who do not know any better than to be quiet. To replace us, we who knew what it was like to be treated like a person before they knew we were centers. One day they won't need any of us ferals. And I'll be damned to the pits before I help them!"

Megatronus' chest heaved when he finished, and Orion couldn't tell if it was from the speech itself or the anger that he saw burning in his icy optics. Orion found his chest heaving as well and put a servo on it, willing his spark to calm. There was truth here he was not ready to face. It was exciting. It was terrifying. 

"I… I see,” he stuttered. He needed time to think about this, he needed space to breath. “I’ll have the zap-horses ready in the morning.”

He fled.

  


And oh, he had time to think. Through the long hours of the night, watching the stars twinkle and the city of Iacon pulse with light outside his chamber window, he thought.

 


	5. Optimus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewrote the first chapter for those who already read that. Nothing was really changed other then some phrasing because I wasn't happy with it. Also some directions changed because I didn't consult a map of Cybertron as often as I should have. whoops.

Do you come to knock down my door? You are not a stranger to violence. It is baked into Cybertron now, it is born alongside every mech and every creature. It is breathed in and exhaled as suffering and sacrifice here on this broken and unstill world.

 

Cybertron shifted under Optimus' peds. It was a slow shift, a mech waking from a long and fitful recharge. It moved. Rivers began to flow backwards, wells dried up, the sun was covered by ash and soot, all was inhospitable here again.

It had been over eight hundred vorn since the last unsettling, and it looked like the apocalypse. The air was thick with ash from some unseen hot spout and Optimus' rations were running thin. Even now his solar converter was useless without the light of the sun. It was just a hazy dull gray smudge on the horizon, now threatening to slip behind a jagged spire.

Optimus found his mind wandering during the long trek across the dust planes, making his way ever farther south-east. At first everything was blank. A soft fuzzy blanket to dull the pain, everything was unreal to him, as though he picked his pack up with a hand a million meters away and sipped his energon with an intake that wasn't his own.

It did not last. It broke in the morning of the second solar cycle of his search for Bluestreak and Bumblebee. He felt all the emotions break over him like a tidal wave. After that he felt raw and exposed, but he didn't let himself rest. The mechs who had taken his sparklings, their tracks would soon blow away and the metal would forget which direction they went.

The ash started falling thickly on the morning of the ninth solar cycle. Optimus turned his dull eyes to the sky, intakes laboring to filter the air. An alert in his HUD notified him that cool down protocol was pulling more power. He dismissed the notification.

There used to be dust storms in Yuss. The sky would turn hazy and the wind would whip grit up into the air and dance between houses and over roofs. He would return from his work at the mechanimal pens to usher his sparklings inside. They made a game of sealing all the windows, doors, and all the cracks and holes. 

Another alert let him know that his filters were clogged, more power rerouted to cool down procedures. He looked down at the jagged metal he was walking on and wondered when he had lost the zap-horses trail.

The dust storm had whistled passed the house on all sides, shaking the windows and doors. Optimus ratcheted up the light and heat on the generator at the center of the house. His sparklings huddled around the light with him, bright faces turned up and audials pricked up for the sound of the storm. 

A high priority alert sprung up, wobbling in front of his optics. He was overheating. He was going into stasis lock. The ground came up to meet him.

 

I guess I spoke too soon, the unsettling takes its toll on all of us. Even you.

 

Optimus came to with a gasp, his optics stuttering on. There was a film of soot over his vision but his intakes were miraculously clear. His energon read... fifty-eight percent.

He sat up in a panic.

He was sitting on a birth on one side of a large enclosed room. Unlike his home in Yuss, the walls were made out of machined metal, fitted together with precision instead of raw iron sheets and rough welding. Along one side the walls gave in to pristine black glass. On the far side of the room was a large roll-up door, now closed. 

Movement behind him had Optimus springing to his feet, consciousness plunging into the earth to root himself into the nodes there. But it was only an old, small mech with long faded colors and an ornate face closing the door of a smaller chamber behind him.

"Good to see you awake." The old mech’s voice was deep and comfortable, like the gentle heat of a generator.

"Hello," Optimus said cautiously. "Where am I?"

"We're in my home, it's an old bunker build eon before the unsettlings began." He was carrying a tray with different colored energon cubes balanced on it. "I found you in stasis a klick from here you should be careful young mech, bring a filter mask with you next time. Do you mind joining me over there at my desk?"

Optimus didn't budge. "No set takes on more tanks to fill in an unsettling. Who are you and what do you want?"

The mech sighed heavily through his vents and shook his helm. "My name is Alpha Trion and this is not a set. This is merely an old mech with energon to spare who hasn't seed metal nor paint of anyone for vorn."

"Ahh," Optimus said thoughtfully. The name sounded familiar, as though remembered from a long ago dream, in a time in high dark walls and hurried learning. He inhaled sharply as the memory slapped him like cold rain.

" _Alpha Trion_? I’ve…. read your books! Your compilated histories, The Amplitude, and your theory papers," Optimus said breathlessly. "I must have read your history on the Function Empire a hundred times when I was at the-"

He had to stop himself from raising the ground to crush the mech before him in the shear wave of panic that came crashing over his helm. The fear cascaded down to his servos and pedes and in turn deep into his consciousness below. Seven vorns later, and the mere thought of the academy still brought fire down his lines and the need to run into his very spark.

"Are you from the academy?" He growled.

Alpha Trion shifted the cubes he was holding uncomfortably. "Oh no. Definitely not. The most dangerous thing I am is a writer, hah!" The mirth dropped from his voice a moment later however. "Besides, no one will have to worry about the academy anymore, not with what happened to Iacon."

Optimus narrowed his optics on concussion. "What happened to Iacon?" 

"Oh well, you see… it's where this whole unsettling started about ten solar cycles ago. There's nothing left of the city, just a pit I’m afraid."

"Ahhh," Optimus said in a quiet voice.

The nodes within Cybertron were all connected, they formed a web all around the planet. When he had been younger, he had laid down at night and seen how far he could extend his awareness, how many links in the chain of the nodes he could pass through, until he could begin to feel the curvature of Cybertron itself. Now he reached out west and north and found an open wound spewing ash and metal dust, where once had been a fire-bright city of millions.

"Oh," he said even more quietly and relaxed his stance, pulling his awareness away from the nodes and into himself.

Alpha Trion pressed a tiny cube of palest blue energon into his hand with a look of sympathy. "Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Please let me make it up to you, follow me to my desk?"

Optimus did so absently. The old mech alone did not worry him. He did not maake the ground under ped vibrate like a center nor did he have the utter stillness of a guardian, no he was no threat Optimus decided.

Alpha Trion led him to an alcove closer to the large roll-up door. Inside was a well worn desk cluttered with mementos all playing centerpiece to a tome with thin silica mesh pages and mechanimal hide bound steel covers. It was indescribably ancient. 

The old mech settled comfortably behind his desk and set the tome aside, along with the energon he had been carrying, and gestured to a simple chair on the other side that Optimus sat in without a word.

"You've read some of my historical compilations so you know my enthusiasm for modern folk tales and their historical and anthropological origin. Please, have some of the engex."

Optimus had forgotten about the cube in his hand. He sipped it numbly, processor wandering between a distant gash in the world and two lost sparklings. Once he was fully recovered…

"Not too many years ago I began research on a popular one. The modern story of Duo Luna. There are so many different interpretations and practically no stored data from that era, apart from actual physical indications of exactly what happened.”

Alpha Trion excitedly pulled out a data pad from a drawer behind the desk and turned it on. It flickered to life with a wheeze of old fans. “You see, many of the regions on Cybertron, mainly Protihex, Koriolis, Tarn, and the Rust Seas region believe it followed Unos Luna. But Stanix! Ohhh Stanix is where the real data is. Well, and the Mithril Sea.”

The old mech thrust the data pad in front of Optimus’ optics. He took the data pad and stared at the tiny numbers in long vertical lines of data streaming down the page like trickles of energon.

“...I don’t know what this is…” Optimus said tiredly, energy spent on worry and contemplation.

Alpha Trion took it back from him a little disappointed. “Optimus it’s the answer to what has been happening to the planet for tens of thousands of vorn. Didn't you ever wonder if the old stories were true? If there was an easier way to live or why we see the remnants of great and prosperous civilizations but cannot recapture what they had? Here, Just… please follow me.”

Optimus rose reluctantly from his chair and followed the old mech over to the black glass half of the long room. On the wall was a small control panel with illuminated buttons. Alpha Trion pressed one and the black glass in front of them became bright white shafts of afternoon light.

It took a second for his optics to dim sufficiently but soon Optimus could see out onto the barrens of the Mithril Sea, it stretched to the right and left as far as he could see, white metal sand and slate reflecting the sun overhead until his optics watered.

Alpha Trion pointed off to the right where a single pale spire stood up from the floor of the once-sea. It arched up until it was lost in the pale blue of the sky.

“That’s Duo Luna,” he said reverentially. “They fell to Cybertron in pieces, and Cybertron cannot rest without them.”

“I know.” Optimus cast his eyes downward. “I know what happened to the moon.”

“I hope-” Alpha Trion sounded like he was choosing his words with extreme care. “-that someone could but them back to rights if they had the processor to?”

"Respectfully Alpha Trion,” Optimus said, optics hard, servos balled up into fists at his side. “The moon has caused me enough grief. It cannot be restored, the most powerful mech on all of Cybertron tried and failed. He has paid more than his price for our hubris.”

The old mech placed a steadying servo up on Optimus’ pauldron. “Please, you are not him, _you_ are Optimus Prime.”

Ice flooded through Optimus’ lines. “How do you know that name?” He brushed the servo off and took a step back, once again reaching down below into the ground.

“You told me your name,” Alpha Trion said in confusion.

“No! I told you my name was Optimus, I never said anything about Prime. Where did you hear that? No one should know that!”

He looked around in panic, there was the windows beside them, we was sure that with the right pull on the metal below, they would shatter. On the other side of the chamber was the roll-up door, also easily shaken from its foundations.

“I… I can’t give you those answers.”

Optimus’ optics narrowed to slits. “I am going to walk out that door over there and you are going to stand here, I don’t care what you know or who you are. You’re not stopping me.”

The old mech sighed and Optimus became aware of exactly how faded and old he looked. “Please… at least take the energon and your pack, I've put a face plate in there for you, it should keep the ash out.”

Optimus did just that.

 

It was another solar-cycle before he ran into the south-eastern mech on zap-horseback. He was almost too big for his mount, blocky and a chipped blue color, a single yellow optic flashing from a crimson face plate.

Optimus flung himself behind a ridge of crystal out of sight of the mech as he cantered on. There was a prickle in the nodes beneath the rider that spoke of a center, untrained in subtlety. He doubted that this specific individual would know where his sparklings were, but a mech clearly from the same region must know the largest set. And maybe even who would want to kidnap center children given their own status as one.

He closed his optics, seeing through the singing of nodes and the treamble of hooves. With a flick of his will a wall of iron jutted up in front of the rider who swerved and cursed.

There was a ripple as the mech tried to seize control of the ground and wrestle the nodes away from him. He was a very blunt mech, no tricks, no subtlety, just brute force. 

Before he could make any headway on his hold, Optimus tugged the ground around the rider up into towering walls of iron that surrounded him, showering rust down onto the mech like rain. He heard another curse from his hiding place.

He didn't have much time before the center mech began tearing at the walls. Springing from his hiding place, Optimus dashed over the uneven ground up to the make-shift prison and a jolt of Cybertron beneath his peds threw him up to the top in a single leap.

Down below, the center had his fists clenched around a make-shod hammer, optic screwed tight shut in concentration. The walls began to tremble beneath Optimus as a torus of ice and wind began whipping around the walls.

With a flick of his servo he brought his own torus around and slapped it right into the other mech’s, dispersing it into sleet. The mech was blown off the zap-horse, landing hard on his back.

"Alright, alright you win! Primus that hurt, you're not from New Kaon are you?"

Optimus kept his ready stance, nodes singing under his control. "Is that where you were headed?" The other center seemed remarkably amiable for being a klick from death should he will it. 

The other mech got gingerly to his feet. "Yeah, that's where we're gathering. I'm sure they'd welcome a center like you. Pits but you pack a punch, Academy trained?" 

Optimus ignored the last part, instead lowering the walls with a gesture and making his way over to the other center. He held tight onto the ground below them, ready for the slightest aggressive move.

"What's your name?"

"Breakdown.”

"I came from Yuss, where one of my sparklings was killed, and the other two kidnapped by south-eastern mechs riding zap-horses that looked a lot like the one you were riding."

Breakdown invented sharply and broke optic contact. "Uhh, not my job. Never liked gathering the mechlings."

Rage engulfed Optimus, burning through his lines, desperately wanting to rush out of him in seismic waves and a killing cold torus. He contained it, compressed it down into a cold determined blade. He bared his dentae beneath the face plate.

"You are going to take me to New Kaon, and you are going to step aside as I take my sparklings back."

  
  



End file.
